2019 UN SDSN Europe Sustainable Development Report

Towards a strategy for achieving the Sustainable
Development Goals in the European Union
Includes the SDG Index and Dashboards for the European Union
and member states

November 2019
© Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Institute for European Environmental Policy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The views expressed in this report do not reflect the views of any organisations, agencies or programmes
of the United Nations or the European Union. Additionally, they may not reflect the opinions of SDSN’s
Leadership Council members and their host institutions.
Design and Layout by Pica Publishing Ltd – www.pica-publishing.com

This 2019 Europe Sustainable Development Report (ESDR 2019) builds on the methodology of the annual Sustainable
Development Report, including SDG Index and Dashboards, issued by the SDSN and Bertelsmann Stiftung since 2016.
The ESDR 2019 was prepared by teams of independent experts at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network
(SDSN) and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP). Lead writers at the SDSN were Guido Schmidt-
Traub, Guillaume Lafortune, and Jeffrey Sachs. At IEEP, Céline Charveriat and Marianne Kettunen led the writing. The
data analysis was conducted by the SDSN, led by Guillaume Lafortune and Grayson Fuller. Liana Mehring, Bluebery
Planterose and Finn Woelm provided research assistance. María Cortés-Puch and Dorothea Strüber provided useful
comments and managed coordination with SDSN networks. Bartosz Brzezinski (IEEP) provided editorial comments.
The views expressed in this report do not reflect the views of any organisations, agencies or programmes of the
United Nations or the European Union. Additionally, they may not reflect the opinions of SDSN’s Leadership Council
members and their host institutions.
The report benefited from the support and active participation of the European Economic and Social Committee
(EESC) and its member organisations. In particular we would like to thank Peter Schmidt (President of the EESC
Sustainable Development Observatory), Jacek Krawczyk (EESC Group I President) and the EESC secretariat, in
particular, Raul Muriel Carrasco.
The report benefited from comments and inputs from various experts and organisations. Two rounds of online
consultation and one physical workshop were organised between April and June 2019 to collect feedback on the
indicator selection and preliminary results. We would like to thank all the experts from the European Commission
who provided inputs for this study, including Barbara Bacigalupi (DG ENV), Anton Steurer (Eurostat), Simon Bley
(Eurostat), Christine Mayer (Eurostat), Fritz Gebhard (Eurostat), Arwyn Jones (JRC), Ana Neves (JRC), Eleni Papadimitriou
(JRC), Roberta Pignatelli (EEA), Brian MacSharry (EEA), Francois Dejean (EEA), Katarzyna Biala (EEA), Sami Pirkkala
(Counsellor, Prime Minister’s Office of Finland). We would also like to thank experts from think tanks and research
institutions, including Jan Cools (SDSN Belgium), Richard Gregory (RSPB Centre for Conservation Science), Christine
Hackenesch (German Development Institute), Martin van Ittersum (Wageningen University & Research), Nicolas
Jarraud (Cyrprus Institute), Adolf Kloke-Lesch (SDSN Germany), Johan Langerock (Oxfam), Maria Nikolopoulou
(Comisiones Obreras and member of the EESC), Federico Olivieri (ASVIS), May van Schalkwyk (European Public Health
Alliance) and Imme Scholz (German Development Institute). Finally, we would like to thank participants of the 2018
ENOP/SDSN Conference in Bonn, members of the SDSN European Networks, and Think 2030 who provided valuable
comments to this report.
This report was made possible in part thanks to the financial support from the Prime Minister’s Office in Finland
and the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (HBF) European Union, Brussels. HBF supported the production of Chapter 3:
Implementing the SDGs in Europe.
PICA Publishing provided editorial comments and prepared the manuscript for publication.
Please cite this report as: SDSN & IEEP. 2019. The 2019 Europe Sustainable Development Report. Sustainable
Development Solutions Network and Institute for European Environmental Policy: Paris and Brussels
Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements ii
Forewordv
Summary of findings and recommendations vii
List of Acronyms xi
Part 1. The EU’s performance against the SDGs 1
1.1 The SDG Index and Dashboards 2
1.2 Leave no one behind 7
1.3 Convergence across EU member states 10
1.4 International spillovers 12
Part 2. Six SDG Transformations 15
2.1 An operational framework for achieving the SDGs 15
2.2 Applying the SDG Transformations for the EU 17
2.3 Long term pathways and stakeholder engagement for SDG
Transformations 23
Part 3. Implementing the SDGs in the EU 27
3.1 Internal priorities for the EU and member states 28
3.2 EU Diplomacy and Development Cooperation for the SDGs 32
3.3 Tackling international SDG spillovers 35
3.4 Getting it done: Strategy, budgets, monitoring, and
member state engagement 38
Conclusions 42
References 43
Annex 1. Methodology 49
Annex 2. EU and member states SDG profiles 62
Annex 3. Indicator profiles 122
CONTENTS iii
2019 Europe Sustainable Development Report

List of figures
Figure 1 |The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as adopted in 2015 by all UN memberstates 1
Figure 2 |Total SDG Index Score 3
Figure 3 | Leave-No-One-Behind Index forthe European Union 7
Figure 4 | Leave-No-One-Behind Dashboard. Data forlevels and trends disaggregated
in fourkey dimensions 8
Figure 5 | People at risk ofincome poverty aftersocial transfers (%), 2005-2018 9
Figure 6 | Palma ratio, 2006-2016 10
Figure 7 |The 2019 SDG scores forEuropean cities 11
Figure 8 | International SpilloverIndex forthe European Union 13
Figure 9 | Howthe six SDGTransformations contribute to the 17 goals 16
Figure 10 | Large discrepancies in innovation across the European Union 17
Patent applications to the European PatentOffice (per 1,000,000 population)
Figure 11 | Obesity is rising fast across the EU. 18
Prevalence of obesity, BMI ≥ 30 (% adult population)
Figure 12 | Greenhouse gases are falling too slowly. 19
Energy-related CO2 emissions percapita (tCO2 /capita)
Figure 13 |The EU must address unsustainable agriculturevalue chains. 20
Biodiversity threats embodied in imports to Europe (threats per million population)
Figure 14 |Airpollution in European cities remains unacceptably high with large variances. 21
Exposure to air pollution, PM2.5 (µg/m3)
Figure 15 | Majorgaps in digital infrastructure and innovation across the EU. 22
Average score SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure)
List of tables
Table 1 | SDG Index forthe European Union 4
Table 2 | SDG Dashboard forthe European Union 5
Table 3 | SDGTrend Dashboard forthe European Union 6
Table 4 | Main data gaps to trackthe SDGs in the EU 51
Table 5 | Spilloverindicators and categories 54
Table 6 | LNOB indicators and categories 55
Table 7 | Indicators used forSDGTrends and period fortrend estimation 56
Table 8 | Indicatorthresholds and justifications forthe optimumvalues 59
List of boxes
Box 1: SDG Index and Dashboards forEuropean Cities (2019) 11
Box 2: Fourdimensions ofbusiness performance against the SDGs 24
Box 3:Addressing international spillovers:The case ofzero-deforestation supply chains 37
iv

Foreword
We are pleased to launch this 2019 Europe Sustainable Development Report, which identifies policy
priorities for the European Union (EU) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and implement
the Paris Climate Agreement. The report compares the performance of the EU and its 28 member
states1
on all 17 SDGs and provides detailed country profiles using a mix of data sources. This
assessment is based on the methodology developed since 2016 by the Sustainable Development
Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. This methodology has been successfully
audited by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
This report comes at a critical time for Europe. The new President and Commission have already
committed to a European Green Deal to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. They have further
pledged to place the SDGs at the centre of the European Semester – the Union’s framework for the
coordination of economic policies across member states. Indeed, in their mission letters each new
Commissioner is asked to ensure “the delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals within
their policy area. The College as a whole will be responsible for the overall implementation of the Goals.”
These bold commitments set the right tone for charting a path towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.
Leadership from the European Union is critical, not only because Europe needs to achieve the goals
for its own benefit, but also because the 2030 Agenda is a global affirmation of the core values of the
EU. The SDGs combine the principles of a social market economy with environmental sustainability.
Yet, to date, the European Union has not seized the opportunity to lead on the SDGs by implementing
them internally, reducing its negative spillovers, and providing global leadership through its external
action and development cooperation.
This report complements the strong official Eurostat report on the SDGs by presenting a broad range
of data on SDG achievement across the Union. We have conducted three consultations with civil
society, business, trade unions, and government representatives on suitable metrics for the SDGs.
Drawing on the established SDSN methodology, we estimate how far the EU as a whole and each
member state are from achieving the SDGs to provide actionable information for each country and
group of stakeholders. We further combine metrics of SDG achievement into an overall SDG Index that
allows for direct comparison across all member states.
Across the world, European countries come closest to achieving the SDGs, but important challenges
remain. Drawing on the data presented in this report, we outline the contours of an EU strategy
to achieve the SDGs. We highlight some of the instruments that will be needed to develop and
implement this strategy at EU and member states levels.
We find that such a strategy must have three major components. First, the EU must tackle some
domestic SDG implementation challenges, notably by implementing the European Green Deal
for energy decarbonisation, the circular economy, and sustainable land use and food systems;
by investing in education and promoting innovation; and by harnessing the potential of digital
technologies for Europe’s sustainable development. Such strategies must be designed with careful
attention to fairness and inclusion to ensure that – in the words of the 2030 Agenda – no one is left
behind. All major European institutions, including the European Parliament and the European Council,
1. At the time of writing it was unclear whether Brexit would be completed by 31 October 2019, so we refer to 28 EU
member states.
v

must play active roles in the design and implementation of these strategies. As we describe in the
report, success will require that all policy tools, including the European Semester and the Multiannual
Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027, are aligned with the SDGs. It will also require participatory,
multi-stakeholder governance to seize the opportunities for sustainable development.
Second, our data shows that the EU produces large negative spillovers on other countries. These
spillovers include unsustainable consumption and production patterns, base erosion and profit
shifting through unfair tax competition and banking secrecy, as well as trade in weapons. The EU
should lead by example by curbing negative spillovers and strengthening positive spillovers, such as
official development assistance or sharing of sustainable technologies.
Third, the EU must engage more actively in international diplomacy to promote the SDGs, support
multilateralism, and advocate for the values of the European Way. In particular, the EU can play a
critical role in multilateral fora, such as the United Nations, and critical environment conventions,
including for climate and biodiversity. In addition, the Union should use the SDGs to help guide major
bilateral exchanges, including with Africa and other world regions.
What you cannot measure you cannot manage. So, success will require greater investments in
statistical capacity and data. The SDG monitoring report prepared annually by Eurostat should
be expanded to track targets for SDG implementation that need to be set by the new European
Commission. Moreover, we hope that unofficial reports like this one can make a useful contribution to
the debate.
As always, all data used for this report is available for download at www.sdgindex.org/EU. We welcome
suggestions for filling data gaps and for improving the analysis and presentation of the results. Please
write to us at info@sdgindex.org.
Jeffrey D. Sachs Céline Charveriat Peter Schmidt
Director,
Sustainable Development
Solutions Network (SDSN)
Director,
Institute for European
Environmental Policy (IEEP)
EESC member, President
of the EESC’s Sustainable
Development Observatory
vi

Summary of findings and
recommendations
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed globally by all 193 UN member states,
represent an affirmation of European values. The SDGs call on all nations to combine economic
prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. The SDGs are intimately linked with
the Paris Climate Agreement (which is incorporated in SDG 13). The SDGs and the Paris Climate
Agreement should be viewed as a package, with the SDGs oriented towards 2030 and the Paris
Agreement oriented towards climate-neutrality by 2050, with major progress by 2030.
European countries lead globally on the SDGs, but none are on track to achieve the Goals
by 2030. According to the global 2019 SDG Index prepared by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the
Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), all ten countries closest to achieving the SDGs
are in Europe, a truly remarkable performance in the international perspective. Yet, as the EU SDG
Index and Dashboards show, no European country is on track towards achieving the goals.
The EU and its member states face the greatest challenges on goals related to climate,
biodiversity, and circular economy, as well as in strengthening the convergence in living
standards, across countries and regions. In particular, countries need to accelerate progress
towards climate change (SDG 13), sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12), protection
and conservation of biodiversity (SDGs 14 and 15), and sustainable agriculture and food systems
(SDG 2). Many countries are falling back on “leave no one behind”, so the EU’s SDG strategy must
place emphasis on strengthening social inclusion for all people living in its territory. Education and
innovation capacities must be improved to raise living standards in poorer member states and
accelerate the convergence in living standards.
European countries also generate large, negative spillovers that impede other countries’ ability
to achieve the SDGs. Such spillovers comprise environmental spillovers (such as greenhouse gas
emissions or biodiversity loss embodied in trade), financial and governance spillovers (such as banking
secrecy), and security spillovers (such as weapons exports). The EU’s SDG strategy must identify and
address negative international spillovers.
The SDGs can only be achieved through deep transformations that will not be achieved
through normal policymaking. The transformation will need long-term plans and policies based on:
• Technological Pathways: to identify one or more technology scenarios to reach climate
neutrality by 2050, including intermediate milestones for five-year periods;
• Financial planning: to identify efficient and low-cost pathways among the possible
alternatives;
• Policy frameworks: to identify a feasible mix of regulations, public investments, and
incentives;
• Subsidiarity analysis: to assign policy and financing responsibilities across levels of
government, including the EU level (Commission, Council, Parliament, European Investment
Bank), member states, and regional and local governments in the EU.
vii

• Mission-oriented Research and Innovation: to identify public-private research and
development priorities to achieve the SDGs and the objectives of the Paris Agreement;
• Metrics and Monitoring: to identify a set of indicators to assess progress towards the
2050 goal and intermediate milestones, and to create an ongoing feedback process from
metrics to policy.
An EU strategy to achieve the SDGs needs to focus on three broad areas: internal priorities,
diplomacy and development cooperation, and tackling negative international spillovers.
The good news is that the necessary instruments already exist to address these challenges. The
focus should therefore not be on identifying new instruments but in aligning existing instruments
and mechanisms (including budget, investment strategies, regulatory governance, and monitoring
frameworks) to the SDGs.
Priority I: Internal SDG priorities for the EU and member states.
The new European Commission, working with the European Parliament and the European Council,
has the vital role to ensure that EU processes are in place to achieve the SDGs, including under the
framework of the European Green Deal. Based on the SDG Index data, we identify three primary
EU-wide SDG priorities to be pursued with all member states. Individual countries may need to tackle
additional challenges.
1. A European Green Deal for Sustainable Energy, Circularity, and Land Use Food. At
the heart of the EU’s strategy to achieve the SDGs, the European Green Deal must include
an EU-wide strategy to (i) fully decarbonise the energy system (including transport, building,
and industry) by 2050; (ii) to promote the circular economy and achieve greater efficiencies
in resource use and far lower waste; and (iii) develop integrated policies to promote
sustainable land use and food systems by 2050. Getting towards the 2050 objectives will of
course require urgent action now.
2. A Sustainable Europe Investment Plan. The EU needs to increase investments in sustainable
infrastructure, including through greater EU resources. New sources for public revenues
should be considered to finance the investment plan, which will require adequate resourcing.
3. Skills and Innovation: EU Education Area and Horizon Europe 2030. Europe needs
to increase investments in education, job skills, and innovation, with a focus on STEM
education at all levels and RD for sustainable technologies. Just as China has its Made in
China 2025 Initiative and the U.S. has its America AI Initiative, Europe should intensify its
RD efforts.
Getting it done: Ensuring the right level of ambition and policy coherence. The policy
mechanisms and instruments for addressing the internal SDG priorities are mostly in place,
but policies need to become more ambitious in some areas and focus on 2030 targets, which
the EU needs to define. Throughout, the EU needs to define clear targets that can guide policy
implementation and the monitoring of progress. In the short term, policy tools must be made
coherent with a particular focus on budgets, measurement and reporting, and coordination with and
across member states:
viii

• Aligning the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027 with the SDGs. The next
MFF should be the MFF for the SDGs. This includes phasing out expenditures that are not
aligned with the SDGs and increasing spending on sustainable development priorities. New
MFF principles and their alignment with the SDGs should be integrated into all EU funds. The
MFF should also identify clear SDG metrics that can track progress towards the goals.
• Strengthened SDG measurement and indicators. As we show in the report, monitoring
frameworks across EU policy fields are not aligned with the SDGs and lack coherence. This
can and needs to be changed quickly by identifying headline SDG indicators that should
guide all tools, including budget, member state coordination, and external action. Moreover,
Eurostat and other EU bodies charged with collecting SDG data will require greater
resources to track key SDG data, including on international spillovers. Another important
priority is better real-time data on the implementation of the European Green Deal and
other critical SDG strategies.
• Putting the SDGs at the core of the European Semester. The scope of the European
Semester should be expanded slightly to cover all major SDG dimensions. This will not
require a major change since the European Semester is already meant to track social and
several environmental targets; and a clear SDG focus should not divert attention away
from macroeconomic coordination, which is also needed to achieve the SDGs. Member
states might be requested to present their long-term national strategies in support of the
European Green Deal and other SDG priorities – alongside macroeconomic policies and
fiscal frameworks. The European Semester process would then map national strategies
against EU-wide strategies to identify and address opportunities for greater alignment and
flag issues arising out of implementation.
Priority II: European Diplomacy and Development Cooperation for the SDGs
European Diplomacy for the SDGs: The SDGs represent Europe’s values, so the EU should use them
as part of its external action. Indeed, a critical part of Europe’s role in achieving the SDGs includes
global leadership through diplomacy and international economic relations. The core areas for the EU’s
SDG diplomacy are manifold and include:
1. EU leadership for the SDGs in the international conventions, particularly the climate
and biodiversity conventions, where the EU needs to push for climate and biodiversity
neutrality by 2050.
2. EU SDG leadership in multilateral forums to protect and strengthen multilateralism.
3. Bilateral fora with key partners, particularly with the African Union (AU), Mercosur, China,
Japan, North America, and Russia
4. EU-China Partnership for Sustainable Investment. Europe should offer to link its own
Sustainable Europe Investment Plan with the Belt and Road (BRI) Initiative, under the
condition that BRI also adopts a sustainable investment framework.
European Sustainable Development Cooperation: The EU is the world’s biggest donor and
contributor to climate finance. It now needs to align its development cooperation with the SDGs to
serve the needs of emerging economies and poor countries. The EU should consider launching a
bold AU-EU Partnership for African Education to help ensure that all African children are enabled to
complete education.
ix

Priority III: Tackling international spillovers
To ensure international legitimacy, the EU’s diplomacy and sustainable development cooperation must
be coherent with its internal ambitions. This will require addressing negative international spillovers.
The EU needs to systematically track such spillovers and assess the impact of European policies on
other countries and the global commons. In particular, trade policies and decarbonisation strategies
need to be reviewed with a view towards international spillovers. EU member states also need to make
further efforts in curbing banking secrecy and unfair tax competition.
The SDGs are Europe’s goals and provide an ambitious vision through to 2030. The new
Commission, working with the Parliament and member states, must launch the European Green Deal
as a decisive framework for Europe’s sustainable development during the coming decade. Another
part of Europe’s challenge is to create a highly innovative EU economy that will develop or improve
the needed sustainable technologies and implement them on an accelerated basis throughout the
EU. The EU has tremendous global influence through its intellectual and policy leadership, its lead in
SDG implementation, and the fact that the EU is the world’s strongest champion of the rule-based
multilateral order with the UN Charter, institutions, and treaties at the core. It should therefore pursue
an ambitious SDG strategy that is coherent internally and externally.
x

AI Artificial Intelligence
AU African Union
BCFN Barilla Center for Food Nutrition Foundation
BEPS Base-Erosion and Profit-Shifting
BMI Body Mass Index
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
CAP Common Agricultural Policy
CBD Convention on Biological Diversity
COR European Committee of the Regions
DG Directorate-General
EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development
ECA European Court of Auditors
EEA European Environment Agency
EESC European Economic and Social Committee
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EIB European Investment Bank
EMAS Eco-Management and Audit Scheme
ENOP European Network of Political Foundations
EPO European Patent Office
ESS European Statistical System
EU European Union
FABLE Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land Use and
Energy Pathways
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GDPR General Data Protection Regulation
GNI Gross National Income
GPSDD Global Partnership for Sustainable
Development Data
IDDRI Institute for Sustainable Development and
International Relations
IEEP Institute for European Environmental Policy
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPES International Panel of Experts on Sustainable
Food Systems
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
JRC Joint Research Centre (European Commission)
LNOB Leave No One Behind
MAES Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and
their Services
MFF Multiannual Financial Framework
MPA Marine Protected Areas
NFRD Non-Financial Reporting Directive
ODA Official Development Assistance
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development
PIAAC Programme for the International Assessment
of Adult Competencies
PISA Programme for International Student
Assessment
SDG Sustainable Development Goals
SDSN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
SILC Statistics on Income and Living Conditions
SNA Systems of National Accounts
STEM Science, technology, engineering and
mathematics
TELOS Brabant Centre for Sustainable Development
UN United Nations
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCC United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change
WBGU German Advisory Council on Global Change
WCMC World Conservation Monitoring Centre
List of Acronyms
xi

2019 Europe
Sustainable
Development
Report
1.1 The SDG Index and Dashboards.......................2
1.2 Leave no one behind............................................. 7
1.3 Convergence across EU member states......10
1.4 International spillovers..................................... 12
The EU’s performance
against the SDGs1

The EU’s performance
against the SDGs
Part 1
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed globally by all
193 UN member states, represent an affirmation of European values.
The SDGs call on all nations to combine economic prosperity, social
inclusion, and environmental sustainability with peaceful societies.
The SDGs are intimately linked with the Paris Climate Agreement
(which is incorporated in SDG 13). The SDGs and the Paris Agreement
should be viewed as a package, with the SDGs oriented towards
2030 and the Paris Agreement oriented towards climate-neutrality by
2050, with major progress by 2030. The 2020 targets for biodiversity
are scheduled to be updated in 2020.
Figure 1 | The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as adopted in 2015 by
all UN member states
1

These bold and holistic goals are highly aligned
with the European Union’s (EU) purpose and
strategy. As President Ursula von der Leyen
stated in manifesto: “This is the European way: we
are ambitious. We leave nobody behind.” She has
pledged to make Europe “the first climate-neutral
continent by 2050” and to enshrine that goal in a
new European Climate Law. Crucially, she plans
to refocus the European Semester on the SDGs
(von der Leyen, 2019).
Europe is far in the lead globally in achieving the
SDGs. According to the 2019 SDG Index prepared
by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Sustainable
Development Solutions Network (SDSN), all ten
countries closest to achieving the SDGs are in
Europe, as are 16 of the top 20 countries – a
remarkable performance in the international
perspective. The SDGs, indeed, represent the
EU’s ethos, accomplishments, and aspirations.
Yet, as we will show in this report, no EU country
is on track for achieving the SDGs. The EU is also
not championing the SDGs effectively (Kloke-
Lesch, 2018).
1.1 The SDG Index and Dashboards
To better understand how the EU and its member
states perform against the SDGs, the SDSN, in
cooperation with IEEP, has developed an EU
SDG Index and Dashboards that draws on far
richer and more timely data than is available
for the global SDG Index (Sachs et al., 2019). As
described further in the methodology section
(Annex 1: Methodology) and (Lafortune et al.,
2018), we score each country’s performance on
a particular indicator on a scale from 0 to 100,
with 100 denoting the best possible score. The
methodology for the index and dashboards has
been audited by the European Commission’s Joint
Research Centre (JRC). At the time of writing, it was
unclear when the United Kingdom would leave the
EU so this report includes data for 28 countries.
Our SDG Index and Dashboards complement
the official SDG monitoring report prepared
by Eurostat, “Sustainable development in the
European Union” (Eurostat, 2019). As highlighted
in a report prepared for the EESC (Lafortune and
Schmidt-Traub, 2019), we commend Eurostat
for the excellent work it has done on the official
SDG report for the EU, which provides a wealth
of policy-relevant information. While Eurostat
cannot estimate the distance to SDG targets that
are not explicitly quantified in the SDGs or for
which no quantitative 2030 targets exist in the
EU, we use the established methodology for the
SDG Index to compute how far a country is from
achieving each SDG. Our analysis can include a
broader set of data sources, including “unofficial
data” from trusted NGOs and research centres,
which allows us to shine a spotlight on difficult-to-
measure challenges in the EU, including pervasive
international spillovers. Finally, working with
the European Economic and Social Committee
(EESC), we were able to consult a broad section of
the European civil society on the type and range
of metrics to be included in this unofficial SDG
Index. We hope our analysis can shed additional
light on some of the remaining SDG challenges
that must be addressed in the EU.
Part 1. The EU’s performance against the SDGs
2

1.TheEU’sperformanceagainsttheSDGs
inequalities are the lowest and where access
to care and treatment is close to universal
(Table 2).
By contrast, the EU and its member states
obtain their worst results on SDG 2 (No
hunger and sustainable agriculture) and SDGs
12-15 related to responsible consumption
and production, climate and biodiversity. No
single EU country obtains a “green” rating
on these goals. Progress over the past few
years is also too slow to generate meaningful
transformations by 2030 (Table 3). This raises
fundamental questions about the long-term
sustainability of Europe’s development model.
Our results show that no EU member state
has achieved or is on track to achieve the
SDGs (Table 1). Northern European countries
– Denmark, Sweden and Finland – top the EU
SDG Index. Yet even these countries face major
challenges in achieving several SDGs and are not
on track for achieving all of the SDGs. Countries
in Southern and Eastern Europe perform more
poorly (Figure 2).
The EU and its member states obtain their best
results on SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 3 (Good
Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 8 (Decent
Work and Economic Growth). The EU is among
the regions in the world where poverty and
Figure 2 | Total SDG Index Score
Source: SDSN and IEEP, 2019
40.0
70.0
90.0
SDG Index Score
Country SDG Index
Score
Denmark 79.8
Sweden 79.4
Finland 79.1
Austria 76.7
Germany 75.3
France 74.7
Netherlands 71.8
Czech Republic 71.8
Slovenia 71.7
Estonia 70.4
Belgium 70.3
United Kingdom 70.2
Ireland 68.2
Spain 66.8
Portugal 66.2
Poland 66.1
Luxembourg 66.0
Italy 65.3
Slovak Republic 65.2
Latvia 65.2
Hungary 65.1
Croatia 63.2
Lithuania 62.6
Malta 62.3
Greece 58.9
Bulgaria 57.1
Romania 55.9
Cyprus 55.0
European Union 70.1
3

Table 1 | SDG Index for the European Union
*Population-weighted average
Source: Authors’ calculations
RANK COUNTRY SCORE
1 Denmark 79.8
2 Sweden 79.4
3 Finland 79.1
4 Austria 76.7
5 Germany 75.3
6 France 74.7
7 Netherlands 71.8
8 Czech Republic 71.8
9 Slovenia 71.7
10 Estonia 70.4
11 Belgium 70.3
12 United Kingdom 70.2
13 Ireland 68.2
14 Spain 66.8
15 Portugal 66.2
16 Poland 66.1
17 Luxembourg 66.0
18 Italy 65.3
19 Slovak Republic 65.2
20 Latvia 65.2
21 Hungary 65.1
22 Croatia 63.2
23 Lithuania 62.6
24 Malta 62.3
25 Greece 58.9
26 Bulgaria 57.1
27 Romania 55.9
28 Cyprus 55.0
European Union* 70.1
4

Table 2 | SDG Dashboard for the European Union
SDG achieved Challenges remain Significant challenges remain Major challenges remain Data not available
Note: Full list of indicators available in Annex 3: Indicator Profiles. For methodology and thresholds see Annex 1 and Table 8.
Austria
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Belgium
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Bulgaria
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Croatia
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Cyprus
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Czech Republic
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Denmark
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Estonia
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Finland
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •France
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Germany
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Greece
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Hungary
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Ireland
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Italy
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Latvia
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Lithuania
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Luxembourg
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Malta
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Netherlands
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Poland
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Portugal
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Romania
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Slovak Republic
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Slovenia
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Spain
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Sweden
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •United Kingdom
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
European Union
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
AFFORDABLE
AND CLEAN
ENERGY
DECENT
WORK AND
ECONOMIC
GROWTH
INDUSTRY,
INNOVATION
AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
REDUCED
INEQUALITIES
SUSTAINABLE
CITIES AND
COMMUNITIES
RESPONSIBLE
CONSUMPTION
AND
PRODUCTION
LIFE
ON LAND
PEACE,
JUSTICE
ANDSTRONG
INSTITUTIONS
CLIMATE
ACTION
LIFE
BELOW
WATER
PARTNERSHIPS
FOR THE
GOALS
NO
POVERTY
ZERO
HUNGER
GOOD HEALTH
AND
WELL-BEING
QUALITY
EDUCATION
GENDER
EQUALITY
CLEAN WATER
AND
SANITATION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
AFFORDABLE
AND CLEAN
ENERGY
DECENT
WORK AND
ECONOMIC
GROWTH
INDUSTRY,
INNOVATION
AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
REDUCED
INEQUALITIES
SUSTAINABLE
CITIES AND
COMMUNITIES
RESPONSIBLE
CONSUMPTION
AND
PRODUCTION
LIFE
ON LAND
PEACE,
JUSTICE
ANDSTRONG
INSTITUTIONS
CLIMATE
ACTION
LIFE
BELOW
WATER
PARTNERSHIPS
FOR THE
GOALS
NO
POVERTY
ZERO
HUNGER
GOOD HEALTH
AND
WELL-BEING
QUALITY
EDUCATION
GENDER
EQUALITY
CLEAN WATER
AND
SANITATION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
5

Table 3 | SDG Trend Dashboard for the European Union
AFFORDABLE
AND CLEAN
ENERGY
DECENT
WORK AND
ECONOMIC
GROWTH
INDUSTRY,
INNOVATION
AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
REDUCED
INEQUALITIES
SUSTAINABLE
CITIES AND
COMMUNITIES
RESPONSIBLE
CONSUMPTION
AND
PRODUCTION
LIFE
ON LAND
PEACE,
JUSTICE
ANDSTRONG
INSTITUTIONS
CLIMATE
ACTION
LIFE
BELOW
WATER
PARTNERSHIPS
FOR THE
GOALS
NO
POVERTY
ZERO
HUNGER
GOOD HEALTH
AND
WELL-BEING
QUALITY
EDUCATION
GENDER
EQUALITY
CLEAN WATER
AND
SANITATION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
AFFORDABLE
AND CLEAN
ENERGY
DECENT
WORK AND
ECONOMIC
GROWTH
INDUSTRY,
INNOVATION
AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
REDUCED
INEQUALITIES
SUSTAINABLE
CITIES AND
COMMUNITIES
RESPONSIBLE
CONSUMPTION
AND
PRODUCTION
LIFE
ON LAND
PEACE,
JUSTICE
ANDSTRONG
INSTITUTIONS
CLIMATE
ACTION
LIFE
BELOW
WATER
PARTNERSHIPS
FOR THE
GOALS
NO
POVERTY
ZERO
HUNGER
GOOD HEALTH
AND
WELL-BEING
QUALITY
EDUCATION
GENDER
EQUALITY
CLEAN WATER
AND
SANITATION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Austria L 5 D D L L D L L D D •• 5 •• 5 L p
Belgium D 5 D L D L 5 L L L D •• p D 5 D 5
Bulgaria D 5 D 5 5 D D L D p D •• p D D D 5
Croatia D 5 D 5 5 5 5 D D p D •• 5 D 5 D 5
Cyprus L 5 D 5 5 D D L D •• 5 •• p D 5 D ••
Czech Republic L 5 D 5 D D D L D L D •• p •• D L 5
Denmark L 5 L D D L L L L L D •• 5 D D D L
Estonia D 5 D L D D D L D 5 D •• 5 D D L 5
Finland L 5 D L D L L L L L L •• p 5 D L p
France L 5 D D L D D D L D D •• D D 5 D L
Germany L p D D D L D L L p L •• D D 5 D L
Greece L 5 D 5 5 D L D D 5 D •• 5 D 5 D 5
Hungary L 5 D p 5 D 5 L D 5 D •• 5 •• 5 5 5
Ireland L 5 D L D D L L D L D •• p 5 D L p
Italy 5 5 L 5 D L D D D 5 D •• D 5 5 D 5
Latvia D D D D D D D L 5 D D •• p D D D 5
Lithuania D 5 D D 5 D D L 5 p L •• p D D D p
Luxembourg 5 p L D D L 5 D D p D •• 5 •• 5 D L
Malta D p D L 5 5 D L 5 •• D •• p D D 5 D
Netherlands L p D L D L 5 L L L D •• 5 p D D p
Poland L 5 D L 5 D D L L 5 L •• 5 5 D D 5
Portugal L 5 D L D D L L D 5 D •• p 5 5 L p
Romania L D D 5 5 D D L D p 5 •• 5 L 5 D 5
Slovak Republic L 5 D 5 D 5 D L D D D •• 5 •• 5 D 5
Slovenia L 5 D L D D D L D L D •• 5 D p L 5
Spain D 5 D L 5 D D L D 5 D •• p D p D D
Sweden D 5 D L D L L L L 5 D •• D 5 5 D L
United Kingdom 5 5 D D D L L L L 5 D •• 5 D 5 D L
European Union L p D D D L D L L 5 D •• D D 5 D 5
L On track D Moderately Increasing 5 Stagnating p Decreasing •• Data not available
Note: See more details on trend methodology and years covered in Annex 1 and Table 7.
6

Figure 3 | Leave-No-One-Behind Index for the European Union
1.2 Leave no one behind
The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs are guided
by the principle to “leave no one behind”,
which commonly denotes inequalities within
each country. Such inequalities may include
inequalities in income and wealth; inequalities
in access to public services and infrastructure;
gender inequalities; and inequalities in access
to food, health, education, and other human
development outcomes. The principle should
apply to all people living in the EU, including
migrants. In addition, SDG 10 calls for reducing
inequalities between countries, which is generally
referred to as “convergence” by the EU and
considered in section 1.4.
Since indicators related to leaving no one behind
are distributed across many SDGs, we present
here a new Leave-No-One-Behind (LNOB) Index
that tracks inequalities within EU countries
using a broad range of measures (see Annex
1 for details). All indicators included in the EU
LNOB Index are also part of the SDG Index and
Note: Measures poverty, income inequalities, gender equality and gaps in access to services and housing.
See Annexes for the full list of indicators included in the Leave-No-One-Behind Index.
40
70
90
LNOB Index Country LNOB Index
Finland 86.4
Netherlands 83.1
Denmark 82.5
Sweden 81.2
Slovenia 79.8
Austria 78.8
Germany 76.7
United Kingdom 75.9
France 75.7
Ireland 75.4
Luxembourg 75.2
Belgium 73.7
Czech Republic 73.0
Spain 71.9
Estonia 71.5
Poland 70.7
Malta 70.0
Italy 68.5
Portugal 65.4
Latvia 63.3
Croatia 63.3
Hungary 62.6
Lithuania 61.8
Cyprus 60.2
Greece 53.2
Bulgaria 49.6
Romania 49.2
European Union 72.7
7

Dashboards. The LNOB Index can bring out
inequalities in access and outcomes that may be
hidden by the average values that dominate the
overall SDG Index.
Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark perform
best on the LNOB Index (Figure 3). By contrast,
countries in Eastern and Southern Europe face
significant equity challenges characterised by
greater poverty rates and material deprivation
but also gaps across population groups
in access to care, quality education, and
infrastructure (including broadband internet
connection). Women are also more often
underrepresented in public institutions and
report higher levels of insecurity. In all EU
member states, poor people report greater
unmet care needs than rich people, and women
represent less than half of senior management
of the largest publicly listed companies.
The data suggests that over the past five years,
EU member states have made only limited
progress towards ensuring that no one is left
behind, including in countries scoring lowest on
LNOB. Figure 4 presents a disaggregated LNOB
dashboard. Each of the four dimensions comprises
several indicators that are described in Annex 1.
In line with the methodology for constructing SDG
Dashboards, the colour in the LNOB dashboard is
determined by the two indicators in each cluster
where the country performs worst. In this way,
good performance on some indicators cannot
hide poor performance in others.
The Dashboard shows that extreme poverty
and material deprivation remain high in the
Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe, and
Southern Europe. Progress over the past five
years has been limited. In some of the most
equal EU countries in Northern and Western
Note: A country that remains above the threshold for goal achievement obtains a green arrow even if the situation has
stagnated or slightly worsened over the past few years. The green arrow denotes “on track or maintaining performance
above goal achievement”.
Extreme poverty and
material deprivation Income inequality
Access to and
quality of services Gender inequality
Baltic States
Central and
EasternEurope
Northern Europe
Southern Europe
Western Europe
L
D
D
D
D
5
5
L
5
5
D
D
D
D
D
5
5
D
D
D
Figure 4 | Leave-No-One-Behind Dashboard. Data for levels and trends disaggregated in four key
dimensions1
1. EU sub-regions based on Euvoc. Western Europe: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands
and the United-Kingdom. Northern Europe: Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Central and Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia.
Southern Europe: Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain. As explained above, we refer to 28 member states
since it was unclear at the time of writing when Brexit would be completed.
•SDG achieved
•Challenges remain
•Significant challenges remain
•Major challenges remain
L On track or maintaining SDG achievement D Moderately improving 5 Stagnating p Decreasing
8

Europe, some LNOB indicators have been
deteriorating, including the share of people at
risk of poverty after social transfers (Figure 5).
Income inequalities, as measured by the Palma
Ratio, have increased in countries such as
Germany and Sweden (Figure 6). On access
to and quality of services, the percentage of
people covered by health insurance for a core
set of services is universal or close to universal
in the large majority of EU countries. Access
to basic formal education (5-15 years old) is
also guaranteed to all children. Yet, many EU
countries face deteriorating access to healthcare
and education for people living in rural areas.
Poor people continue to report more unmet care
needs than rich people in all EU countries, and
learning outcomes of 15-year-old students from
lower socio-economic background remain lower
– and sometimes significantly lower – than those
of other students in many EU countries. Finally,
on gender equality, despite progress in women
representation in senior management positions
and in Parliaments across the EU, gender pay
gap and violence against women require further
actions, in particular in Baltic States and Central
and Eastern European countries.
Figure 5 | People at risk of income poverty after social transfers (%), 2005-2018
Note: People at risk-of-poverty are persons with an equivalised disposable income below the risk-of-poverty threshold,
which is set at 60 % of the national median equivalised disposable income (after social transfers).
Source: EU-SILC
Long termobjective
0
5
10
15
20
25
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Baltic States
Southern Europe
Central and Eastern Europe
Western Europe
European Union
Northern Europe
SDG Target
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
9

Note: The Palma Ratio denotes the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income (GNI)
divided by share of the poorest 40%. A Palma Ratio of 1 means that the top 10 percenters take in no more income than
their bottom 40 percenters. Doyle and Stiglitz propose a Palma Ratio of 1 by the year 2030 (Doyle and Stiglitz, 2014).
Source: OECD
Figure 6 | Palma ratio, 2006-2016
1.3 Convergence across EU member
states
A founding principle of the EU has been to
promote economic development in poorer
member countries and to close the gap with the
richest countries through the convergence of
living standards. Convergence in per capita GDP
across EU member states was rapid between
1990 and 2008, but the process slowed down in
the aftermath of the global financial crisis starting
in 2008 (Inchauste and Karver, 2018).
Once again, differences within countries matter.
There is some evidence that convergence in
average per capita living standards was driven
significantly by rapid economic and productivity
gains in capital and other major cities with
rural regions and smaller cities lagging behind
(Alcidi et al., 2018a, 2018b). Therefore, the
European Committee of the Regions (COR)
highlights the critical role of territorial policies
and localisation of the SDGs in ensuring coherent
SDG implementation across EU member states
(European Committee of the Regions, 2019). To
begin to better understand the role of cities and
regions in the European SDG implementation,
the SDSN and the Brabant Centre for Sustainable
Development (TELOS) have released in May 2019
the first prototype SDG Index and Dashboards
for European Cities (Lafortune et al., 2019)
(Box 1).
Long termobjective
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
2006 2007 2008
Baltic States
Southern Europe
Western Europe
European Union
Northern Europe
SDG Target
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
10

This prototype SDG Index and Dashboards for EU
cities compares the performance of capital cities and
a selection of large metropolitan areas in the EU and
the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on the 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In total, results
for 45 European cities are presented in this first pro-
totype version using 56 indicators. The report includes
contributions from the OECD, the European Commission
and local policymakers (Lafortune et al. 2019).
The report finds that no European capital city or large
metropolitan area has fully achieved the SDGs. Nordic
European cities – Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki – are
closest to achieving the SDG targets but they still face sig-
nificant challenges on one or several goals. Overall, cities
in Europe perform best on SDG 3 (Health and Wellbeing),
SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 8 (Decent Work
Source: Lafortune et al, 2019.
Figure 7 | The 2019 SDG scores for European cities
and Economic Growth), and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation
and Infrastructure). By contrast, performance is lowest
on SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production),
SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 15 (Life on Land).
Further efforts are needed to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions in line with full decarbonisation by 2050. Access
to affordable and quality housing is also a persistent issue
in most European cities (SDG Target 11.1).
As always, this analysis is constrained by the availability,
quality and comparability of data. This constraint is even
greater at the subnational level. Despite the ground-break-
ing work conducted by the European Commission
– notably via Eurostat, European Environment Agency and
the Joint Research Centre – to define territorial levels and
metropolitan areas and standardise subnational data and
indicators, major gaps remain to monitor all SDGs.
Box 1: SDG Index and Dashboards for European Cities (2019)
50
50 – 55
5
60 – 65
65 – 70
70
SDG city score
5 – 60
11

1.4 International spillovers
In an increasingly interdependent world,
countries’ actions can have both positive and
negative effects on other countries’ ability to
achieve the SDGs (Schmidt-Traub et al., 2019).
Such international “spillovers” are pervasive
and have been increasing fast with the growth
in trade exceeding the growth in world gross
product (Fischer-Kowalski et al., 2015).
Positive and negative spillovers must therefore be
understood, measured, and carefully managed
since a given country cannot achieve the SDGs if
the other ones do not do their part. We consider
three groups of spillovers:
• Environmental spillovers cover effects
related to the use of natural resources and
pollution. They tend to be negative exter-
nalities, whereby demand from importing
countries increases pollution and natural
resource loss in exporting countries. For
example, biofuel mandates from Europe and
other major economies have accelerated
tropical deforestation (Valin et al., 2016).
• Economic/finance/governance spillovers
cover positive spillovers, such as inter-
national development finance, as well as
negative spillovers, including unfair tax com-
petition, banking secrecy, money laundering,
and the exploitation of workers in interna-
tional value chains.
• Security spillovers include negative
externalities, such as the trade in arms,
particularly in small arms, and organised
international crime. Among positive security
spillovers are investments in conflict preven-
tion and peacekeeping, including through
the United Nations.
To track the spillovers generated by each EU
member state, we introduce an EU SDG Spillover
Index (Figure 8) that captures spillover data
across all SDGs. Scores range from 0 (worst
performance) to 100 (best performance).
On the positive side, the EU and its members
states are the greatest per capita providers
of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and
international climate finance under the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change. Yet,
net spillovers from EU countries are large and
negative, and can undermine other countries’
ability to achieve the SDGs. This is particularly true
for wealthier EU member states and those that
are highly integrated in the global value chains.
Most EU member states generate large
negative impacts through trade, which, inter
alia, embodies CO2 emissions, biodiversity loss,
and water scarcity. The import of textiles from
countries with poor labour standards generates
work accidents in exporting countries. Tax havens
and financial secrecy in EU member states and
overseas territories undermine other countries’
ability to mobilise the public resources needed
to achieve the goals (Gaspar et al., 2019). Finally,
the large-scale transfer of major conventional
weapons from some EU member states can
promote insecurity.
The data underscores the urgency of tackling
international spillovers, as part of an EU
strategy to achieve the SDGs. In some cases,
good intentions, such as replacing fossil
fuels with biofuels, can have unintended
negative consequences on other countries.
For this reason, spillovers need to be tracked,
understood, and tackled through targeted
policies described in Section 3.2.
12

Figure 8 | International Spillover Index for the European Union
Note: The Index covers environmental, economic/finance/governance and security. It does not capture transboundary
shipments of waste and physical flows (such as transboundary pollution flows) due to lack of data availability. The detailed
list of indicators is accessible in Annex 1. All indicators are weighted equally. Indicators are reported on a per capita basis
for cross-country comparisons. A value of 100 corresponds to the best available score (no negative spillovers on other
countries) whereas a value of 0 corresponds to the worst possible score (high negative spillovers on other countries).
Country Spillover
Index
Poland 78.4
Estonia 72.9
Romania 72.5
Hungary 72.5
Denmark 72.0
Czech Republic 71.5
Germany 71.4
Bulgaria 69.6
Sweden 67.0
Croatia 66.3
Spain 66.1
Portugal 65.9
France 65.8
Slovenia 65.3
Latvia 63.6
Finland 63.5
Lithuania 63.3
Italy 62.1
Greece 61.8
Austria 60.7
Belgium 55.7
Malta 54.1
Ireland 53.1
United Kingdom 50.2
Cyprus 47.4
Netherlands 44.7
Luxembourg 42.6
European Union 66.0
40
70
90
Spillover Index
13

2019 Europe
Sustainable
Development
Report
2.1 An operational framework for achieving
the SDGs................................................................... 15
2.2 Applying the SDG Transformations
for the EU................................................................. 17
2.3 Long term pathways and stakeholder
engagement for SDG Transformations.......23
Six SDG
Transformations2

Six SDG
Transformations
Part 2
As described in the preceding section, our SDG Index demonstrates
that the EU as a whole and many of its member countries face
urgent challenges to achieve the SDGs in all three pillars of
sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental.
2.1 An operational framework for
achieving the SDGs
Based on an extensive analysis of the
interventions required to achieve the SDGs,
SDSN and partners recommend six SDG
Transformations (Figure 4) that together can
achieve all 17 SDGs (J.D. Sachs et al.,2019). The
transformations are system-based and designed
to address the most important trade-offs and
synergies for implementation. They are aligned
with the way in which governments are organised
and can also help guide action by business
and civil society. Each transformation poses
challenges for the EU – some of great urgency.
The six SDG Transformations framed for the
European Union are:
1. Well-educated workforce and innovative
economy, built on excellence in education,
gender equality, and social protection;
2. Health and wellbeing for all, built on
universal health coverage and healthy
lifestyles;
3. A climate-neutral and circular economy,
built on decarbonising energy systems by
2050 and massively increasing the resource
efficiency of European industry;
4. Sustainable food systems, land use, and
oceans, built on efficient and sustainable
agriculture, conservation and restoration of
nature, healthy diets, and sustainable food
processing and international value chains;
5. Sustainable cities and communities that
are productive, healthful, inclusive, and green,
with a particular focus on small towns and
rural communities;
6. Digital and other modern technologies
for sustainable development, built on
excellence in key industries, while protecting
privacy, human rights, and social inclusion.
Together, these six transformations can achieve
the SDGs in the EU (Figure 9). They must be
underpinned by a commitment to leave no one
behind. For example, a climate neutral economy
must be achieved in a fair and socially equitable
manner. Similarly, the education system must
benefit all citizens, and digital technologies
must not amplify social divides. A second critical
principle is the need for circularity of resource
use and decoupling of environmental impact
from human wellbeing. We must dramatically
increase the resource efficiency of industry, the
food system, and public services.
15

Figure 9 | How the six SDG Transformations contribute to the 17 goals (adapted from J.D. Sachs et al. 2019b)
Source: Authors. Adapted from J.D. Sachs et al., 2019b.
1. Well-educated workforce
and innovative economy
2. Health and wellbeing
for all
3. A climate neutral and
circular economy
4. Sustainable food systems,
land use, and oceans
5. Sustainable cities and
communities
6. Digital and other modern
technologies for
sustainable development
Part 2. Six SDG Transformations
16

2.2 Applying the SDG
Transformations for the EU
For each transformation, there is much work to
be done in the EU, as we describe in this section.
A key question for the EU is how to set the
2030 targets and how to track progress in each
transformation towards achieving the SDGs (see
also Section 3.4).
Baltic States
Southern Europe
Western Europe
European Union
Northern Europe
SDG Target
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Long termobjective
Source: European Patent Office (2019)
Transformation 1Transformation 1
WELL-EDUCATED WORKFORCE AND INNOVATIVE ECONOMY
Figure 10 | Large discrepancies in innovation across the European Union
Patent applications to the European Patent Office (per 1,000,000 population)
The EU is a global leader in education and
technology, but innovation is very uneven
across its regions (Figure 10). Regions that
lag behind in innovation also lag behind in
good jobs, investment, and long-term growth
potential. An EU strategy to achieve the SDGs
should build on quality education across
the Union (European Commission, 2019a),
the active engagement of girls in Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) education and professional training,
and the promotion of new technology missions
to put the EU in the leadership of sustainable
technologies (Mazzucato, 2018).
17
2.SixSDGTransformations

The EU has achieved very high life expectancy
and nearly universal health coverage, but
like other parts of the world, it suffers from
an epidemic of non-communicable diseases,
including rising rates of adult-onset diabetes,
obesity, other metabolic diseases, mental health
challenges, and excessive use of tobacco and
Figure 11 | Obesity is rising fast across the EU.
Prevalence of obesity, BMI ≥ 30 (% adult population)
addictive substances (Figure 11). Healthcare
costs are rising sharply. Obesity and its related
conditions also reduce GDP by 3.3% in OECD
countries (OECD, 2019a). The EU should promote
healthier lifestyles and integrate disease
prevention more centrally into the health system
(OECD and European Union, 2018).
HEALTH AND WELLBEING FOR ALL
Source: World Health Organization (2019)
Long termobjective
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Baltic States
Southern Europe
Western Europe
European Union
Northern Europe
SDG Target
2013 2014 2015 2016
18

The EU is a major global contributor of
greenhouse gases, pollution, and waste
(Figure 12). Some of Europe’s environmental
damages are also embedded in imports from
other regions where greenhouse gas emissions,
pollution, and unregulated wastes are very high.
The European Green Deal, underpinned by a new
Sustainable Europe Investment Plan, must deliver
significant and rapid reductions of greenhouse
gases by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050,
while also curtailing the loss of biodiversity and
cutting pollution from plastics, particulate matter,
toxic wastes, and other sources. This transition
must address the environmental objectives
laid out in the SDGs, but it must also promote
economic development and be fair so as to
ensure that the poor and people living in small
towns or remote rural areas are not left behind.
Figure 12 | Greenhouse gases are falling too slowly.
Energy-related CO2 emissions per capita (tCO2/capita)
Long termobjective
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Baltic States
Southern Europe
Western Europe
European Union
Northern Europe
SDG Target
2015 2016
Source: Gütschow, J.; Jeffery, L.; Gieseke, R. (2019): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series
(1850-2016). v2.0. GFZ Data Services. https://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2019.001
A CLIMATE NEUTRAL AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY
19

European agriculture feeds increasingly
unhealthy diets. In particular, heavy meat
consumption in the EU is not only detrimental
to human health, but a significant burden
on land use in Europe and indirectly in the
Amazon and other world regions through the
EU’s imports of food and feed. Meanwhile,
biodiversity in the EU is under threat from
unsustainable farm practices, the pressures
of biofuels on arable land, the depletion of
freshwater resources exacerbated by climate
change, and the encroachments of urban
building and infrastructure on fragile wetlands
and other ecosystems. Many European fisheries
are heavily fished using destructive techniques,
and fish imports into the EU threaten fishing
grounds in other regions. As part of the European
Green Deal, the EU must promote integrated
strategies for productive, efficient, and resilient
agriculture; the conservation and restoration
of nature; as well as healthy diets and low food
loss and waste. Of particular importance will be
to address international spillovers (Figure 13)
by making EU and global value chains for food,
feed, and biofuels healthful and environmentally
sustainable (FABLE, 2019; SDSN and BCFN, 2019).
Figure 13 | The EU must address unsustainable agriculture value chains.
Biodiversity threats embodied in imports to Europe (threats per million population)
Note: The indicator measures the number of species threatened as a result of international trade.
Source: Lenzen et al. (2012)
SDG achieved
Challenges remain
Significant challenges remain
Major challenges remain
SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS, LAND USE, AND OCEANS
20

The EU is home to many of humanity’s oldest
and most treasured cities, yet these cities are
under multiple threats from heat waves, rising
sea levels, sprawl, traffic congestion, massive
waste flows, and air pollution (Figure 14). At the
same time, many smaller cities and towns are
depopulating and falling behind the major cities
in income levels, jobs, technology, access to
public services, and more. Many European cities
are implementing bold strategies to convert to
clean energy, zero-emission vehicles, zero-net-
energy buildings, waste recycling, and multimodal
transport, while increasing the amount of green
spaces and nature-based solutions to urban
stress factors. The EU should support its cities
in adopting the SDGs as their policy framework,
and in achieving the goals through coordinated
actions at the local, regional, national, and EU
levels. Struggling cities and communities must be
prioritised in strategies for deployment of jobs
and new sectors. Rural areas require greater
investments and connectivity to metropolitan
centres to ensure no one is left behind.
SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES
Figure 14 | Air pollution in European cities remains unacceptably high with large variances.
Exposure to air pollution in urban areas, PM2.5 (µg/m3)
Source: European Environment Agency (2019)
Long termobjective
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
2006 2007
Baltic States
Southern Europe
Western Europe
European Union
Northern Europe
SDG Target
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
21

New digital technologies are critical tools to
combine high production with low environmental
impacts. Smart grids, e-commerce, car-sharing,
3D printing, and other digital technologies
combined with modern materials offer
the potential of “more for less” in terms of
environmental impacts. However, if poorly
managed, the digital economy can exacerbate
inequalities and unsustainable consumption.
They can also harm our political systems
(WBGU, 2019). Compared with the United States
and China, Europe lacks large, internationally
competitive information technology firms.
DIGITAL AND OTHER MODERN TECHNOLOGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Figure 15 | Major gaps in digital infrastructure and innovation across the EU.
Dashboard SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure)
The continent must invest in other modern
technologies to ensure its companies remain
at the cutting edge. At the same time, dangers
abound from new technologies, including
rampant job losses from robots and artificial
intelligence, the loss of privacy, the concentration
of wealth in a few tech giants, and new abuses of
power enabled by the new digital technologies.
The EU is in the lead in overseeing and regulating
the new digital technologies to protect human
rights and privacy, as in the case of the General
Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
SDG achieved
Challenges remain
Significant challenges remain
Major challenges remain
22

2.3 Long term pathways and
stakeholder engagement for
SDG Transformations
Each SDG transformation requires a large-
scale effort by society, including all major
stakeholders: governments, businesses, social
partners, academia, civil society, and individuals.
Governments must set the broad guidelines;
businesses must change their performance
metrics; social partners should integrate
the SDGs into the social dialogue; academia
should provide sustainable development
education, research, and policy analysis; civil
society should hold government and business
accountable; and individuals should support the
SDG Transformations as citizens, consumers,
and managers of their own households and
behaviours. These questions have been
addressed in the EU context by the Multi-
stakeholder Platform (2018).
The transformations require large-scale
changes in public and private investments
and technologies. Consider the case of
energy decarbonisation as an example. Power
generation must shift from coal and gas to
zero-carbon sources, especially wind, solar,
hydro, and geothermal. Vehicles must shift from
internal combustion engines to electric vehicles
with greater uptake of mass transport. Industry
must shift from fossil fuel use in process heating
to other solutions, including electricity and
synthetic fuels. Buildings must shift from use
of coal and gas for heating to electricity. These
shifts will require sustained investments and
bold policies over roughly 30 years to achieve
full decarbonisation. Similar challenges apply to
the circular economy and sustainable land use
and food systems – two other dimensions of a
European Green Deal. The question is how to
achieve such broad, comprehensive, and deep
transformations.
The answer is a mix of direct regulation, direct
provision of public infrastructure, and incentives
for private businesses and consumers, both
positive (e.g. feed-in tariffs) and negative (e.g.
taxes on CO2 emissions). Yet, most of all, the
transformation will need long-term plans and
policies. These plans will be based on a multi-
dimensional analysis that includes:
• Technological Pathways: to identify one or
more technology scenarios to reach climate
neutrality by 2050, including intermediate
milestones for five-year periods;
• Financial planning: to identify efficient
and low-cost pathways among the possible
alternatives;
• Policy frameworks: to identify a feasible
mix of regulations, public investments, and
incentives;
• Subsidiarity analysis: to assign policy
and financing responsibilities across levels
of government, including the EU level
(Commission, Council, Parliament, European
Investment Bank), member states, and
regional and local governments in the EU.
• Mission-oriented Research and Innovation:
to identify public-private research and devel-
opment priorities to achieve the SDGs and
the objectives of the Paris Agreement;
• Metrics and Monitoring: to identify a set
of indicators to assess progress towards the
2050 goal and intermediate milestones, and
to create an ongoing feedback process from
metrics to policy.
We emphasise that this kind of policy analysis
is very different from typical policymaking. The
SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement are longer
term and more transformative than targets
pursued by most policymaking. They presume a
major overhaul in technologies and innovations
in social mobilisation, politics, and governance.
And they, therefore, require a far richer policy
framework to set the transformations in motion.
Moreover, at every step, the complexity of the
challenges suggests that policymakers should
call upon outside experts for advice, including
23

for instance via the creation of an independent
scientific council reporting to the European
Council, as recommended by the Think 2030
group (Baldock and Charveriat, 2018).
The EU business sector similarly needs a new
orientation towards the SDGs. It will, in any
event, face increasing scrutiny on SDG alignment
by regulators, investors, and consumers. New
business metrics will drive investors towards
businesses and activities aligned with the SDGs
and away from activities detrimental to the SDGs.
We recommend that the business metrics for
the SDGs in Europe address four dimensions
(product, production process, supply chains,
and tax compliance) of business performance
(Box 2). The upcoming reviews of the EU’s Eco-
Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the
non-financial reporting directive (NFRD), as well
as the sustainable finance action plan, should be
aligned with the SDGs.
Finally, we strongly urge European institutions
and governments at all levels to engage with
academia and civil society more generally in the
design of SDG pathways and in the pursuit of
SDG goals. Academia should adopt the SDGs and
the Paris Agreement as key topics for the higher-
education curriculum (in business, engineering
and policy schools), research activities, and policy
advisory work with governments. Universities
should be encouraged as incubators of new
sustainable businesses and technologies. Civil
society should, of course, be invited as a full
interlocutor in the design of SDG policies and
programmes and should be expected to play
its vital oversight role in holding governments
and businesses accountable for their SDG
commitments.
Box 2: Four dimensions of business performance against the SDGs
In determining their contribution to the SDGs, businesses should consider four questions:
1. Is the business’ product line beneficial for society? Healthful foods, yes; obesogenic foods, no.
Renewable energy, yes; fossil fuels, no. And so forth.
2. Are the business’ production processes sustainable? Business processes that cause heavy
emissions of greenhouse gases, or that create pollutants, or that leave behind massive
wastes, or that have negative impact on biodiversity and ecosystems, or that endanger the
health and wellbeing of workers and local communities, must be curtailed.
3. Is the business’ global value chain sustainable? Businesses are responsible not only for their
own production but for buying their inputs from sustainable suppliers and selling products to
sustainable users. Businesses will be evaluated henceforth on the entire global value chain,
not on their operations alone. And products will be tracked through the entire lifecycle from
primary commodities to wastes and pollution from final use.
4. Is the business a good corporate citizen? Businesses are expected to pay their taxes fairly
without resort to evasion or aggressive tax shifting to tax havens. They are expected to be
transparent in operations and to report on their SDG alignment. They are expected to respect
the interests of all stakeholders, and not merely aim at wealth maximisation of the owners to
the detriment of workers, communities, and consumers.
Source: SDSN and BCFN (2019)
24

2019 Europe
Sustainable
Development
Report
3.1 Internal priorities for the EU and
member states........................................................28
3.2 EU Diplomacy and Development
Cooperation for the SDGs.................................32
3.3 Tackling international SDG spillovers........35
3.4 Getting it done: Strategy, budgets, monitoring,
and member state engagement......................38
Implementing the
SDGs in the EU3

Implementing the
SDGs in the EU
Part 3
The EU and its member states face three kinds of challenges in
implementing each SDG Transformation. The first, lying within the
EU itself and its member states, is to close the gap between current
realities and SDG targets. The second is to use the EU’s diplomacy,
global leadership, and development cooperation to promote the
SDGs globally. The world’s success in achieving the SDGs is vital
to Europe’s wellbeing and security, as it will promote peace, the
rule of law, reduced migration, greater economic prosperity, and
environmental safety for the entire planet. Third, in order to ensure
coherence between the ambition to achieve the SDGs internally
and its global leadership, the EU must eliminate adverse spillovers
on other parts of the world by ensuring sustainable global value
chains – particularly for agricultural, marine, and forest products –
and responsible policies on tax and finance.
To implement these policies, the EU needs to
pursue a coherent strategy, align its budget
with the SDGs, ensure consistent reporting
and monitoring, and promote coherence and
alignment of EU-wide SDG policies with member
states’ policies. We describe these essential policy
tools in Section 3.4.
The European Commission Reflection Paper
(2019b) outlined three scenarios for pursuing
the SDGs. Our recommendations boil down to a
combination of these three scenarios. In line with
Scenario 1, the EU needs an integrated approach
towards achieving the SDGs. We recommend
that this takes the form of a communication from
the European Commission on an SDG roadmap
described further in Section 3.1.4. As we show
below, key policy mechanisms and instruments
for implementing the SDGs already exist. Some
require a higher level of ambition, and all need
improved policy coherence, alignment with
member states’ policies, and monitoring. We agree
with the emphasis that Scenario 2 places on the
external dimension, but, of course, this can only
be one – albeit important – component of an EU
strategy. And Scenario 3 is correct in emphasising
the critical importance of member states’ policies,
which must be aligned with EU-wide strategies, as
already foreseen in many EU policy instruments.
This will require aligning the European Semester
with the SDGs and without weakening its role in
coordinating macroeconomic policies.
27

3.1 Internal priorities for the EU
and member states
The new European Commission, working with the
European Parliament and the European Council,
has the vital role to ensure that EU processes
are in place to achieve the SDGs, including under
the framework of the European Green Deal.
This will also require careful coordination with
member states’ policies. As noted recently by the
European Court of Auditors (ECA), there remain
significant gaps in the EU implementation of and
reporting on SDGs, notably on understanding the
overall contribution of the EU budget and policies
to achieving the SDGs, with the exception of the
area of external action (ECA, 2019). Budgets are
not systematically aligned with the SDGs (Sachs et
al., 2019), and the EU lacks explicit targets against
which SDG progress can be measured in an
objective way (European Commission, 2019b).
Yet, as the manifesto of the new Commission
President (von der Leyen, 2019) and the
Reflection Paper (European Commission, 2019b)
make clear, the EU has most of the policy
components in place. Some require a higher
level of ambition, and all require greater policy
coherence and clear organisation. The new
Commission can build on a strong foundation, so
the challenges outlined in this section strike us as
achievable with a strong and sound organisation.
Feedback received during the preparation
of this report suggests that the EU needs to
make its operations and decision-making more
participatory. The involvement of stakeholders
should be structured with clear mandates, which
will also generate broad popular appeal. One
key vehicle for stakeholder engagement is the
Multi-Stakeholder Platform. Its mandate should
be reviewed in light of experiences to date and
the needs for implementing the new EU’s SDG
strategy (EESC, 2019).
During its first year, the Commission, working with
other European institutions, should, therefore,
ensure that three key policy priorities for the SDG
are put in place. To address major internal SDG
challenges identified in Sections 1 and 2, the EU
needs (i) a European Green Deal for sustainable
energy, circularity, and land use and foods
systems; (ii) a supporting infrastructure investment
plan and budget; and (iii) a skills and innovation
initiative to promote sustainable development,
with a particular focus on poorer member states.
Making these three policy priorities a reality
will require a budget aligned with the SDGs;
consistent SDG monitoring and reporting across
all SDG priorities; and effective engagement and
coordination of member states (Section 3.4).
3.1.1 A European Green Deal for Sustainable
Energy, Circularity, and Land Use and
Food
By pledging to make Europe “the first climate-
neutral continent”, the European Green Deal and
the supporting European Climate Law announced
by the Commission, will be the cornerstones for
the EU’s strategy to achieve many of the SDGs
for which progress to date is inadequate. Based
on the data presented in Section 1 (Europe’s
performance against the SDGs), the deal must
comprise three broad components: (i) energy
decarbonisation, (ii) resource efficiency and
the circular economy, and (iii) sustainable land
use, oceans, and food systems. The three
strategies need to be coherent and coordinated
(IPCC, 2019), but they are sufficiently distinct
to be designed and implemented in parallel,
building on a range of largely existing EU
policy tools. A critical connector between
them is the unsustainable use of biomass for
sometimes competing uses (food, feed, fibre, and
energy), and all three need to consider major
international environmental spillovers, which we
consider in section 3.3 below. Another connector
are the resource implications of the energy
transition, particularly for the production and
use of batteries. Each strategy needs to mobilise
broad communities of stakeholders to address
synergies and trade-offs.
The necessary transformations need to be
designed to enhance fairness and social cohesion
across the Union. Environmental strategies
Part 3. Implementing the SDGs in the EU
28

3.ImplementingtheSDGsintheEU
that are seen to undermine living standards
or increase inequalities will not be successful
(Williamson, 2018) and risk generating public
anger. Transition funds, as proposed for the
coal sector, can support a fair transformation,
but bespoke strategies are needed for other
industries as well, including automotive, heavy
industry, and parts of agriculture.
Towards a zero-emission energy system
First, the EU needs a genuine Union-wide
strategy for decarbonising the energy system,
comprising power generation and transmission,
heating and cooling of buildings, transport, and
industry. As countries decarbonise their energy
systems through greater use of renewable
energy, they need to more closely integrate their
energy systems to manage the intermittency of
power generation. Some countries have greater
potential to generate clean power through solar
PV and wind, and can supply power to other
member states. Elements of such a strategy exist,
including technical analyses, but the Commission
needs to put them together into a genuine
EU-wide strategy.
Experiences across member states underscore
the vital importance of ensuring a fair energy
transition. Where jobs are lost due to the phasing
out of fossil-fuel use, complementary investments
may be needed to generate alternative
employment. And decarbonisation must work just
as well in rural areas and small cities as in large
metropoles. The former represents particular
challenges for the decarbonisation of transport.
Due to the different economic structures and
reliance on fossil fuels across the Union, the
social challenges of energy decarbonisation vary
across member states.
The EU also needs a frank conversation about
which policy tools are best designed to achieve
the long-term objective of net-zero energy
systems at minimal costs. Market instruments,
including carbon pricing, have a role to play, but
in many areas technology standards can provide
the long-term visibility to industry and consumers
that is needed to redirect RD expenditure.
For example, the EU may consider following the
lead of several countries by committing to phase
out new registrations of light-duty vehicles with
an internal combustion engine by 2030 at the
latest; with heavy-duty vehicles to follow at a later
date. Similarly, the construction of new coal-fired
power plants should stop immediately, followed
by an end to building other fossil-fuel powered
plants in the near future.
Circular economy
Second, as emphasised by all European
institutions, the strategy to decarbonise
European industry must go hand in hand with
efforts to accelerate the shift towards a circular
economy in the EU, including the critical issues
of household and industrial wastes. Progress
to date is insufficient. In spite of the resource
efficiency strategy and the circular economy
package, waste generation has been increasing
since 2012 by 0.8% annually (Eurostat, 2019).
This demonstrates the need for more stringent
measures, including a greater focus on the overall
reduction of material consumption within the
economy, on waste prevention, environmental
tax reform and eco-design standards. To
address negative international spillovers from
Europe’s consumption, the EU should also aim
to drastically reduce the material use embedded
in its net imports and sharply reduce waste
shipments abroad. It is just not right that Europe
continues to export large volumes of plastic
waste to countries in Asia, much of which ends
up in the ocean since these countries lack the
capacity to manage such waste adequately.
Sustainable land use and food systems
As a third plank of the European Green Deal,
the EU needs an integrated strategy to ensure
sustainable land use, oceans, and food systems
(FOLU, 2019). Such a strategy needs to cover three
broad pillars (Schmidt-Traub et al., 2019b) that
cut across many DGs of the EU: (i) resilient and
efficient agricultural production systems, forestry,
and fisheries that combine high productivity with
29

environmental sustainability; (ii) healthy diets
(notably through the Common Agricultural Policy
and the Farm to Fork Strategy on sustainable food)
with low food loss and waste; and (iii) conservation
and restoration of biodiversity (e.g. through the EU
Biodiversity Strategy but – critically – also through
the CAP). The FABLE Consortium (2019) has
proposed global targets for sustainable land use
and food systems that could help inform targets
for the EU and the monitoring framework. See
also the results from IEEP’s net-zero agriculture
project (Allen and Lorant, 2019).
New plans outlined in legislative proposals for the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2020 are
rightly shifting the focus from simple compliance
towards performance and results, including in
terms of environmental outcomes. But these
proposals may have adverse environmental
consequences unless the governance structure
of the CAP is reformed adequately (IPES, 2019).
Currently, the policy also fails to account for the
environmental and food security impacts of non-
food products, such as biofuels. Importantly, the
logic of the CAP remains focused on area-based
payments, so the policy is not integrated with
the demand side and the need to shift towards
healthier diets (Pe’er et al., 2019). Integrating
healthy diets with sustainable agricultural
production, as foreseen through the Farm to Fork
Strategy, should be at the centre of the European
Green Deal, which must also develop a clear
policy framework for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions from agriculture and land use, including
forestry, in line with the requirements of the Paris
Agreement. Since agriculture is the biggest driver
of biodiversity loss, the new European Biodiversity
Strategy to 2030 must not become a standalone
instrument, but needs to be central to the
reformed CAP, which in turn must be integrated
with the Farm to Fork Strategy. The same applies
to (mostly national) policy frameworks for forestry
and soil management.
The EU needs clear spatial policies for managing
competing land uses and to ensure long-term
sustainability. The different components exist
already, including biodiversity and ecosystem
services maps prepared under the EU Mapping
and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services
(MAES) initiative (Maes et al., 2018), and now need
to be combined with other land uses. It is very
encouraging that DG ENV and DG CLIMA have
recently agreed on such a collaboration. Together
they can – and should – include all dimensions of
land use and food systems, including upscaling
the deployment of nature-based solutions in
Europe’s long-term climate strategy for the
UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow in 2020.
As the SDG data for the EU demonstrates, the
EU is far from achieving SDG 14 on marine
ecosystems. Too many fisheries are overexploited
across the EU, and the use of highly destructive
fishing techniques remains widespread across
all EU marine waters. Though member states
have put in place major Marine Protected Areas
(MPAs), many are poorly implemented. Indeed,
bottom trawling and other highly destructive
fishing techniques are more widespread in
some MPAs than in unprotected European
waters (Dureuil et al., 2018). Given the parlous
state of the world’s oceans, the EU should take
the lead in securing its marine ecosystems for
future generations. It must also address major
environmental spillovers on countries in Africa
and elsewhere caused by Europe’s long-distance
fishing fleets and unsustainable demand for
marine products. These issues can be addressed
as part of the Farm to Fork strategy.
The European Green Deal and its three
constituent components must also ensure
that SDGs are mainstreamed across European
policies and regulation. The Commission’s Better
Regulation tool can play an important role in
integrating the SDGs more fully (Renda, 2017).
Moreover, all impact assessments, fitness checks,
and the REFIT Platform’s recommendations must
evaluate environmental, social, and economic
impacts of proposed measures, so that all EU
policies support the SDGs (EESC, 2019).
30

3.1.2 A Sustainable Europe Investment Plan
The European Green Deal requires increased
investments in infrastructure for power,
transport, communication, and agriculture. Since
much of that infrastructure transcends national
borders, an appropriately resourced Sustainable
Europe Investment Plan is needed with a
mandate to support the European Green Deal.
Given the small size of the European budget
relative to the size of the EU economy, there is
little scope for shifting funding within the current
MFF envelope to meet substantially higher
investments in sustainable infrastructure. Indeed,
as we stress throughout this report, each priority
spending area under the MFF – sustainable
agriculture, research and innovation, official
development assistance and diplomacy – faces
increased budget needs if the SDGs are to be
achieved across the EU.
European governments will therefore need
to mobilise greater public resources for the
Sustainable Europe Investment Plan, which will
be critical to achieve the SDGs and to accelerate
convergence across EU member states. This
in turn may require new revenue sources,
like revenues from the EU Emissions Trading
System, the Common Consolidated Corporate
Tax Base, an EU-wide road fuel tax, the Financial
Transaction Tax, proposals to tax big tech
companies, or EU-wide carbon border levies.
In parallel, the Sustainable Europe Investment
Plan can help incentivise the greening of private
finance at the scale and speed required to
achieve the SDGs.
Moreover, as suggested by the Commission
President in her manifesto (von der Leyen, 2019),
the European Investment Bank (EIB) should
become Europe’s “climate bank” and increase
climate finance substantially. The EIB can play
a central role in designing and implementing a
Sustainable Europe Investment Plan.
3.1.3 Skills and innovation: EU Education
Area and Horizon Europe 2030
As underscored by the new Commission, the
EU needs to increase investments in education,
job skills, and innovation, with a focus on STEM
education at all levels and RD for sustainable
technologies. Just as China has its Made in China
2025 Initiative and the U.S. has its America AI
Initiative, the EU should intensify its RD efforts.
Investments in education and innovation must
be increased particularly in regions of the EU
that score low on metrics relating to educational
performance, innovation, and new start-ups
in high-tech sectors. The European Education
Area commits to upgrading educational
quality, fostering skills for lifelong learning, and
promoting digital skills for all. The ambition of the
EU should be to ensure that every worker and
every graduate of an institution of higher learning
is equipped for the new sustainable economy.
European companies must compete at the
cutting edge globally with enterprises from China,
Japan, Korea, the US, and elsewhere.
Horizon Europe aims to be the largest research
programme in the world. While the Horizon
2020 programme was only partly focused on
the SDG-related technologies, the new Horizon
Europe should be closely aligned with the SDGs
and the Paris Climate Agreement. In short,
Horizon Europe should be the research arm of
the European Green Deal. The Horizon Europe
investment programme can also be an important
tool for strengthening innovation systems in
member states that have weaker RD systems,
and in fostering leading European companies in
digital technologies, including artificial intelligence,
as well as other sustainable technologies.
Another priority are integrated technology
missions, as recommended by Mazzucato (2018)
to fuel innovation-led growth. These missions aim
to accelerate targeted innovations in strategic
sectors for the European Green Deal, such as
renewable energy, smart grids, machine learning,
zero-emission vehicles, shipping, aviation, and
sustainable agriculture, among others. The
31

concept and practice of mission-driven RD have
been developed by the previous Commission,
so these findings are ready to be applied.
Clearly, such missions also need to include an
assessment of technology risks, particularly
related to social inclusion and the functioning
of our politics (WBGU, 2019). All should be
systematically aligned with the SDGs. Importantly,
new Horizon Europe missions proposed to date
focus on key environmental issues for Europe,
including oceans, soil and food, and climate
adaptation.
3.2 EU Diplomacy and Development
Cooperation for the SDGs
The SDGs represent European values of a
social market economy with environmental
sustainability. Promoting them internationally
should therefore be a key pillar of European
diplomacy and development cooperation.
In an increasingly multipolar world, where
multilateralism is under unprecedented pressure,
European partnership, diplomacy, and soft power
will be vital to uphold the values incorporated in
the SDGs. Indeed, without the EU’s leadership the
SDGs cannot be achieved.
European diplomacy can also be guided by the
need for shared problem solving and exchange of
lessons in how to achieve the SDGs. No country
has achieved the SDGs, and every government
is facing major challenges in implementing the
six SDG Transformations. Many will want to learn
from Europe’s lessons and expertise. Others may
have their own insights and novel technologies to
contribute to Europe. It will therefore be critical to
consider how the EU’s internal and external SDG
strategies can interact and become coherent.
The core areas for the EU’s SDG diplomacy are
manifold and include:
1. EU leadership for the SDGs in the
international conventions – particularly
the climate and biodiversity conventions
(UNFCCC and CBD) – and other multilateral
environment agreements. With CBD COP
15 in China and the climate COP26 in the
UK, the year 2020 will be critical for setting
the long-term ambition and trajectory of
international cooperation on environmental
sustainability. The EU must play an active and
leading role in mobilising countries around
ambitious outcomes. As the host of the Paris
Agreement, the EU should promote climate
neutrality by 2050 by all signatories and
suitably revised climate strategies (Nationally-
determined Contributions and long-term
low-emission development strategies) by
2020. It should also promote and support
integrated approaches to decarbonising
energy systems and ensuring sustainable
32

land use and food systems drawing on
experiences from the European Green Deal.
Similarly, the EU and its member states
will have a critical role to play to negotiate
an ambitious post-2020 framework for
biodiversity.
2. EU SDG leadership in multilateral forums.
With multilateralism under growing threat,
active EU diplomacy will be critical for helping
ensure that multilateral fora retain their role
for fostering international collaboration. EU
leadership on the SDGs will be critical for
supporting the UN General Assembly, the
High-Level Political Forum on the SDGs, the
2020 UN Nature Summit, meetings of the
G7 and G20, as well as the Annual Meetings
of the IMF and the World Bank. In each
forum, the EU and its member states should
advocate for policies and strategies that
are consistent with achieving the SDGs and
the EU’s internal leadership on sustainable
development.
3. Bilateral forums with key partners.
Achieving the SDGs requires not only domestic
transformation but also a deep transformation
in the way countries interact with each other
through trade, investment, technology, and
other domains. As the largest integrated
market in the world and the pre-eminent
setter of regulatory standards, the EU can
play an important role in advancing the SDGs
through bilateral discussions about trade
agreements and other forms of collaboration.
The EU has developed a host of partnership
agreements (e.g. with Canada, Japan, the
Mercosur countries) that should become
engines of mutually beneficial transformative
change towards the SDGs. Other relationships
of particular importance are with the African
Union, China, Russia, and the US.
4. EU-China Partnership for Sustainable
Investment. China’s Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) is the largest infrastructure programme
in the world. If carried out properly, BRI
will promote sustainable infrastructure
(power, fibre, roads, rail, ports) for much of
Eurasia. If, on the other hand, BRI promotes
unsustainable technologies (such as fossil-
fuel production and use, or infrastructure
that endangers biodiversity), its impact could
be highly deleterious (Tsinghua PBCSF et al.,
2019). The EU should offer to link its own
Sustainable Europe Investment Plan with BRI,
under the condition that BRI also adopts a
sustainable investment framework. By linking
the European investment programme with
BRI, the benefits throughout Eurasia would
be enormous, and the shift across Eurasia
(home to 70 percent of humanity) towards
sustainable technologies would be greatly
amplified.
5. EU regulatory leadership. The EU has
become the de facto regulatory leader
in many areas, as illustrated by the
positive global impact of the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR). As part of its
comprehensive approach to the SDGs, the
EU might consider cooperating with other
countries on regulatory standards in support
of the SDGs, particularly to curb negative
international spillovers (Section 3.3).
Seizing these diplomatic opportunities will
require focus and organization within the EU’s
External Action Service. One option might be
to establish a dedicated unit focused on the
SDGs. This unit might help align major diplomatic
initiatives as well as bilateral relations with an EU
focus on promoting the SDGs domestically and
internationally. Working closely with DG Trade
and other externally-focused DGs, this SDG unit
could play an important role in identifying and
seizing opportunities for greater policy coherence
in support of the SDGs with a particular focus on
reducing negative spillovers (Section 3.3).
As the world’s biggest donor, the EU and its
member states have a special opportunity and
responsibility to support the SDGs internationally.
This will require new framework for sustainable
development finance that carefully rethinks
the best ways in which European development
cooperation can support multiple objectives.
These include the need for more and better
targeted development assistance to achieve the
SDGs in poorer countries (Gaspar et al., 2019;
SDSN and MH, 2019) – in parts to create better
economic and social opportunities and tackle
the root causes of displacement and migration.
33

2019 UN SDSN Europe Sustainable Development Report

2019 UN SDSN Europe Sustainable Development Report

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